Tag Archives | herbalism

In this installment of the Free Radical Media podcast, hosts Eric Scott Pickard and Patrick Ryan are joined by their friend and former guest, Dan DeLion. DeLion, herbalist, forager, naturalist and teacher is the founder of the organization Return to Nature. This time around, Dan discusses his new, far-ranging documentary project, “Hunting the Medicine: Stalking the Wild Spirit,” which has taken him to such places as Columbia and India. He also details his recent personal experience with Ayahuasca in a Shamanic setting, and shares his views and insight into the world of herbalism and the philosophy of living in harmony with the natural world. Dan’s website can be found here.

In this episode of the Free Radical Media podcast, herbalist Susun Weed joins the crew to discuss the methods and philosophy of natural healing. The leading voice in the Wise Woman tradition of healing, Susun Weed is the author of the Wise Woman Herbalist series of books as well as an educator and lecturer. She discusses the “Three Traditions of Healing,” the philosophy of natural and “wholeistic” medicine, and the usefullness of herbal supplements in this lively episode.

The use of mushrooms as medicine is ancient. In Europe we have the example of Ötzi, the Man in the Ice, who carried along with him on his last journey through the Alps five thousand years ago dried pieces of Piptoporus betulinus, or birch polypore, long established as an effective remedy for gastrointestinal parasites.[i] In eastern Asia there are centuries of written documentation of the inclusion of fungi in the materia medica, including many of the mushrooms most popular today.

If we consider the strength of traditional use as well as modern scientific research, we find a half dozen or so medicinal mushrooms as forming the strongest core of our fungal materia medica: Ganoderma spp. (Reishi), Cordyceps sinensis, Trametes versicolor (turkeytail), Lentinus edodes (shiitake), Grifola frondosa (maitake), and Inonotus obliquua (chaga). Here is [sic] the Northeastern United States we have the good fortune of having four of these species readily available in our woods; I regularly gather reishi, maitake, chaga, and turkeytail.

“Witch” is a word that was sullied by various groups of long ago, but it’s been reclaimed by herbalists like me. Witches and the word “witch” have many meanings in many cultures, but for the purposes of this post, I will touch on just one context, one dark moment of history: The suppression of witches—or healers who were mainly women—in medieval Europe that went on for centuries, and the themes behind those witch hunts that still appear in society today.

My mind began to swim with this idea of witch-as-ecofeminist while working at a medicinal herb farm as a farmhand long ago. I had been seeding herbs in the greenhouse alongside another worker, who was semi-complaining about the job, but then finally shrugged. “This one is way better than my last job at an herb farm,” she said.